Blizzard’s ongoing struggle to make Diablo 3 the game that never ends, the Diablo 3 developers have been struggling to keep crowd control attacks, like ground stomp, fun and effective in later levels without making the game too easy.
The current system has the length of stun diminish and diminish till it can only work for a maximum of two seconds. The new system, well, for that you’ll need to read on.
So, according to Blizzard’s senior technical game designer Wyatt Cheng, the problem began when “watching Jay play his barbarian. He was having a blast, killing monsters left and right, casting their giblets to the wind with every successful strike. But, something was bothering him. He was annoyed because Ground Stomp — one of his favorite abilities — got worse as he progressed to higher difficulty levels, and that his character felt weaker despite having better gear and more stat points.”
The weakening caused players to edge away from these moves, abandoning them in the latter stages of the game. As proven by graphs:
The new system combats this effectiveness drop off by, rather than artificially capping the use of the power as you level up, having the effectiveness determined on a per-monster bases. What that means is that each monster has a CC resistance that begins at 0%. With each stun attack they’re hit with that resistance increases and reduces the stun of the attack the next time it’s used. Let me explain in words more succinct than my own:
“How It Works:
- Monsters have a “CC resistance”that is stored on a per-monster basis.
- The CC resistance starts at 0%. For every 1 second CC that is applied to the monster, the monster receives 10% CC resistance.
- Monsters lose 10% of their CC resistance every second that they are not CC’d.
- Elite monster CC resistance is capped at the current reduction values already active for Elites. In other words, CC resistance on most Elite monsters is capped to:
- 35% in Normal
- 50% in Nightmare
- 65% in Hell
- 65% in Inferno”
Neat, huh?
This change to the system will go live in the 1.0.5 patch. Though, don’t expect that patch anytime soon. Blizzard are keeping schtum on release dates, and we know that that can mean.